


Ash and Iron

by Val Mora (valmora)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Blood Kink, Incest, M/M, Tattoo Kink, ambiguous "exiled to new york" setting, bad hygiene, submissive!thor, tattoos don't actually work like that, thaumo-electromagnetism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 04:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valmora/pseuds/Val%20Mora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki's tattoos fade with use, stripping the magic from his skin; after a fight in New York, Thor watches Loki ink the magic back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ash and Iron

**Author's Note:**

  * For [peridium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peridium/gifts).



> Thanks to, in no particular order: 
> 
> \- Peri, who enables me in all things Thor/Loki  
> \- The usual suspect (♦)  
> \- Blake Charlton, from whom I have borrowed this particular tattoo-magic conceit, though he does it better than I ever will, and with actual plot (along with some other nice twists to the magic system: worth a read).
> 
> According to Wikipedia, most tattoo machines these days are driven by electromagnets, which I just couldn't resist.
> 
> Note that tattooing does not actually work as described here; I'm handwaving it with "alien space viking technomagic".
> 
>  
> 
> FURTHER WARNINGS: References to (prank) death by train in the NY subway.

Thor notices, after Loki returns naked from the bathroom into their bedchamber, that Loki's ink is almost completely gone.

"I did not think you would have used so much power only to fight misguided rats." He watches Loki kneel on the floor, reaching under the bed for the box of ash and iron-dust ink. Being able to see the flex of Loki's shoulder muscles, the span of his back uninterrupted, is strange and unfamiliar.

"I used so much _because_ it was misguided rats," Loki points out, not wholly kindly, and finally pulls the box out. "I rather like them."

Thor makes a face. Loki occasionally pretends to fall in front of subway trains, and enjoys sitting on the tracks waiting for them to come, speaking to the rats who skitter under the rails. He says they are more intelligent than the usual rat, being surrounded by noise and humans and urban magic, and occasionally teach him things. Spells, or bits of gossip, or, once, where a serial killer was hiding the bodies.

"I'll need you to do my back, eventually," Loki says, opening the box and pulling out the vials of ink, the needles, the chips of lodestone and coils of wire used to operate it.

Loki is a traditionalist, for this magic: he powers the needles himself, saying it charges the ink before it even reaches his skin.

He starts at his ankle, writing spells into his skin, the runes written small to make room. Loki's handwriting is by necessity precise from long practice with this magic; it used to require refreshing only twice a year, but now he is lucky if he can go two months.

The ink costs a small fortune to have blended, Thor knows; there are few sorcerers on Midgard, let alone ones skilled in Aesir magic, and Midgardians would be unlikely to use this combination. It is not particularly beautiful, but it is magically potent.

Slow, up his leg, the blood beginning to bead on his skin. At his knee, Loki stops, sighs, pauses. Puts down the needles and stretches onto his back, keeping his foot flat on the ground. A drop of blood trails down the knob of his ankle and smears onto the floor.

After ten minutes, he has stopped bleeding, so he sits up again and continues onto his thigh, or at least the front of it - being unable to reach his own hamstring.

The other leg, then, and then his belly, avoiding his genitals - Thor dared him to try it, once, and Loki did it, but it bled badly and the magic inscribed there was strange, an aura that felt the way moon's-blood smells, and did not always work the way it was meant to.

Another rest. He reloads the ink. It has been hours, and he is sweating. There are pink smears on the floor, and Thor's joints ache with the strain of sitting beside him, watching. Reading the spells as they are worked into his skin: this one for sleep, several for explosions of varying sizes (and several more of the same size of each). Many for notice-me-not, for darkness, for electricity, for alertness, for sight past the normal range of vision. For breath underwater, for strength. To make things lighter or heavier, to pull or push, to test for poison, to cage up things of varying sizes and strengths and magical power. For the symptoms of illness, for memory loss, for death.

Thor wets his lips. He wants to curl his hand around Loki's arousal, to press their bodies together until his own skin is damp with Loki's blood and the remaining ink left trailing on his skin, to feel the sparking of Loki's magic alive between them.

Loki glances up. "I will not be held responsible for warping these if you decide to spill your seed on me while the ink is still fresh."

Thor flushes. "I was not thinking of that."

"No?"

"I only thought of your blood on the floor."

"Feel free to lick it up when I'm done."

To kneel between Loki's legs, tracing his tongue over the smooth, polished wood, his mouth full of the taste of varnish and iron, until he reached the innermost part of Loki's inner thighs, still unmarked, and then to touch him where no ink glistens on his skin -

Thor goes to his hands and knees, and bends down.


End file.
